


Where Credit's Due

by as_with_a_sunbeam



Series: Hamilton & Madison [1]
Category: 18th Century CE RPF, 19th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: 1790, 1814, Angst, Bank of the United States, Friendship, Gen, Lost friendship, Regrets, and
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 00:57:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11544087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/as_with_a_sunbeam/pseuds/as_with_a_sunbeam
Summary: Hamilton and Madison's friendship crumbles during the debates over the National Bank in 1790. Twenty-four years later, Madison recalls the encounter as he struggles to re-charter the Bank in the midst of a war. Too late, he realizes his old friend had been right all along.





	Where Credit's Due

**New York, 1790**

“I want to know what you think,” Hamilton says as he closes the door to Madison’s office. Madison looks up from his desk, frowning, pen still poised over the letter he was in the middle of drafting. He could have at least knocked, Madison groused internally.

“What I think about what, exactly, Mr. Secretary?” Madison asks.

“My bank.”

Madison raises an eyebrow at him as Hamilton lowers himself into the chair across from Madison’s desk. They’d been arguing for days about that bank. Days. He’d have thought his position was perfectly clear. But if he wants to hear it again, Madison is more than happy to oblige. “I think it’s a disgusting overreach of government power. I think it’s bad for the South. I think—”

“No,” Hamilton holds up a hand. “I want to know what _you_ think.”

Madison blinks at him, confused.

“This isn’t the Treasury Secretary asking the Representative from Virginia,” Hamilton clarifies for him. “This is me, asking you. Your personal opinion. No one else ever has to know. What do you think?”

Hamilton looks at him with big, earnest eyes. This is an olive branch, he realizes. Things have been tense between them lately. They’d taken to different sides of the political spectrum, but Hamilton was here as a colleague, seeking his opinion. His guidance. Very few people were intelligent enough and willing enough to sit and have a sincere debate with Hamilton.

He thinks about Jefferson. He thinks about the South. He thinks about his duty to Virginia. Those things were more important, weren’t they? So Hamilton would be disappointed. So he’d never come here seeking advice again. He’d find someone else to praise and critique him. Wouldn’t he?

“I was telling you what I think,” Madison answers coolly.

Later, when he thinks back on this moment, he’ll only be able to describe the expression that flickers on the younger man’s face as heartbreak. Hamilton stares for several beats, as if willing Madison to take it back. When Madison doesn’t, he stands, bows respectfully, and opens the office door.

A lesser man would have slammed it behind him, expressed that hurt in a violent gesture. Hamilton pulls it closed gently, with hardly a sound. The door is no less shut, Madison considers. He knows, deep down, Hamilton will never come back through it again.

 

**Virginia, 1814**

“Isn’t there a repository for these kinds of things?” Madison demands of a quailing clerk. The young man stoops over his desk, shuffling through a mess of papers, and Madison straightens his spine to hover over him.

“What’s the name of it again, Mr. President?” the clerk asks.

“Report on a National Bank,” Madison repeats testily.

“And it’s from Secretary Crawford, sir?” the young man asks, with his brow furrowed.

“No,” Madison snaps. The young man looks up, terrified. “It was written by Secretary Hamilton to the House of Representatives in 1790. I want to see it.”

“1790, sir?” the young man repeats, looking impossibly confused. “A lot of things have gone missing, sir, in the war. I’m not even sure where to look for…”

Madison sighs and leaves him fumbling with papers.

~*~

He’s looked everywhere. He can’t find his copy. He had one, he knows it. He’d annotated it heavily. He remembers it sitting on his desk the day... Hamilton’s big, hurt eyes flash across his memory.

He has one last idea. One more, before he sucks up his pride and writes to Elizabeth Hamilton. Surely she had a copy. If nothing else, she could break into her husband’s desk and dig it out of his papers. He’d take a draft. He’d take anything. He needed to see that report.

The day after he arrives at Montpelier, he sneaks out of the house early in the morning before the army of clerks and officials can besiege him in his office. The carriage clatters steadily along the dusty road towards Monticello, and he arrives in a few short hours. Jefferson greets him on the front steps. His old friend’s face is placid, contented, now that he’s officially through with politics. Madison envies him.

“My dearest Jemmy. What a treat.”

“I don’t have long, Thomas. I…I hoped to borrow something from you, if you could find it among your papers.”

“What’s that?” Jefferson queries mildly, ushering him inside.

“Report on a National Bank.”

Jefferson stops short in the entrance hall, turning back to him with his eyebrows rising. “Hamilton’s report?”

Madison nods once, firmly. “Do you have copy?”

“Of course,” Jefferson smiles the smile he always reserves for mentions of Hamilton. Madison has always been uncomfortable with that smile. It feels predatory and dangerous. “Know thy enemy, isn’t that what they say?”

The study is packed to capacity with books and papers, but Jefferson pulls the report from its place with hardly a moment’s searching.

“Whatever do you need with it?” Jefferson asked, holding the yellowed paper in his hands just out of Madison’s reach.

“I’m re-chartering the bank,” Madison tells him.

Jefferson’s eyes widen slightly. “Why?”

“Because it worked. Fighting the war with Britain is a thousand times harder without it. Because…because Hamilton was right.”

Jefferson smiled again, softer this time. “They kept telling me that all through my presidency. Every time I tried to undo one of his little schemes, they’d tell me it couldn’t be done.”

Madison nods, staring down at the yellowed paper. He clears his throat and says, “I’m sorry I can’t stay. I really must be getting back. Thank you, for this.”

Jefferson inclines his head to acknowledge the thanks.

Madison hurries out of the study and back through the entrance hall towards his waiting carriage. As he walks towards the front door, he looks up to find Hamilton’s bust gazing back at him. The admission he’d just made rings in his head. He averts his eyes.

~*~

Hours later, Madison settles in behind his desk and opens the borrowed copy of the report. His office is quiet, for once. He’d closed the door for a few moments of peace.

“It was a work of genius,” he says out loud. He looks at the empty chair in front of him, and wonders if Hamilton can hear him wherever he is now. “I always thought so. I should have told you that then.”

He smiles weakly, trying to imagine the smug look he was sure Hamilton would be wearing were he alive to hear this.

“You were right.”

**Author's Note:**

> My imagining of the final split between Hamilton and Madison. Despite being close in Congress, through the Constitutional Convention and while writing the Federalist Papers, cracks in their relationship began to appear as soon as Hamilton assumed his office. A lot of this is entirely fictional, of course, but Madison really did re-charter Hamilton's bank when he was president. Also, Jefferson did have a bust of Hamilton in his entrance hall. (It's still there if you ever visit Monticello, FYI.) I really liked the idea of Madison having to look at Hamilton as he walks out of Monticello with the report. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! Feedback is always loved and appreciated!


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